How changing discourses on borders and masculinity leads to the intensification of draft evasion

ABSTRACT

This study explores the vast intensification of ‘draft-dodging’ by looking at changes in attitudes towards the border and masculinity. Based on interviews conducted in 2011 and content analysis of newspaper coverage of military service and ‘draft-dodging’ in Cyprus between 2011 and 2019, this study shows that draft-dodging can intensify in the context of changing discourses on borders and masculinity. In particular, the opening of internal borders, the enlargement of borders to the European Union, and the shifting of the locus point of the conflict from inland to the maritime boundaries are the three border changes in Cyprus that contributed to draft evasion. Moreover, the emerging ‘Euro-Cypriot’ hegemonic masculinity maintains a weak relationship with the military. Through the case study of Cyprus, this article illustrates that paying attention to changing notions of border-related security and the reconfigured hegemonic masculinity will shed light on the model of public security and offer implications for draft evasion. The findings from post-conflict Cyprus can help understand draft evasion in Western and post-conflict societies.

KEYWORDS:

• military service
• borders, masculinity
• draft evasion
• post-conflict

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to Professor Svetlana Stephenson for her tremendously helpful suggestions on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Rather than the traditional conscription by drafting a mass of soldiers with basic military service and training, the Nordic countries and Germany are adapting a different model of conscription using a strict selection process that only those young adults with certain special skills, education and abilities will be selected/drafted to form a specialized element of the military.

2. For 52 years, service was more than 24-months long. It was reduced in 2016 to 14 months.

3. These are Austria, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Norway, and Lithuania. In 2018, conscription was also reintroduced in Sweden.

4. https://www.nomoplatform.cy/epitropi-amynas-nomoschedio-gia-pataxi-tis-fygostratias/

5. The phone survey was conducted by the IMR/University of Nicosia using random sampling. Its sample included both cities and rural areas across Cyprus and the participants were 500 men and women older than 18. The survey was conducted on 16^th and 17^th of March 2016, thus shortly before the reduction of military service time in 2016.

6. In Cyprus, there are two main ethnic communities, Greek and Turkish Cypriot. This analysis is concerned exclusively with the Greek Cypriot community. Hereinafter for reasons of conciseness when referring to ‘Euro-Cypriot’, I will mean ‘Euro-Greek Cypriot’ masculinity.

7. The NG has never made any data on draft evasion publicly available. However, media sources have repeatedly commented on numbers. Around one-third of conscripts evade at a certain point in their service (e.g. Palikaridis 2009)